Jessica Brockmole - Letters from Skye

There was once a fisherman who had a beautiful wife named Lucinda. He’d sail off for weeks, following the fish, and Lucinda waited back on the shore, dangling her bare feet in the waves and making his nets. She wove and knotted the strong silvery threads and, as she wove, she would sing. She sang lonely songs of the sea, spirited sailing shanties, and achingly beautiful melodies that sounded as if they came from the mermaids themselves. But as she gazed out across the water, eyes fixed on the horizon for her husband’s boat, each of her songs was tinged with sadness.

Lucinda was so lovely and her song so pure that a water sprite had fallen in love with her. Every day while she sat by the water knotting her nets, the sprite floated nearby, watching her and growing more in love. With each crystal tear that Lucinda shed into the sea, the sprite swam a little closer, wishing there was a way to make her smile. He became determined to win her love and bring her to live in the sea with him.

The sprite swam out to sea, in search of the most precious gifts he could find, things Lucinda had never seen in her humble land, things that would make her realize there was more to the world than her little stretch of shore and the empty horizon. Once she saw how far the sea reached and how much hid beneath the waves, she’d come with him.

He dove to the deepest depths and found the most beautiful conch shell he could, large and creamy white, with a faint glow of pink and pale blue radiating from the inside. He brought it to Lucinda with a shy smile and was pleased to get one in return.

But she refused the gift, saying, “If I want a beautiful shell, I only need to walk along the beach and choose from the shells scattered there.”

“None will be as lovely as this conch shell from so far away.”

“They will be lovelier because they are right outside my door.”

The next day, the sprite danced through the waves until he found the most dazzling fish, with trailing fins of bright blue and yellow. He caught it up in a glass bowl and brought it to Lucinda, who smiled but answered as before. “If I want to see a dazzling fish, I only need to look into the shallows of the bay.”

“None will be as dazzling as this fish from beyond the waves.”

“It will be even more dazzling because it is right outside my door.”

Undeterred, the sprite swam all day and night to a beach in an exotic land ringed with waving palm trees and the smell of fruit. The sand along the beach glittered pure white. He scooped up a measure of the sparkling sand and brought it to Lucinda. But, as before, she answered, “If I want to see glittering sand, I only have to look down at this beach.”

“It won’t be as glittering or as pure white as this sand I found for you.”

“It will be even more glittering in my eyes because it is right outside my door.” She gave the sprite a kind smile. “The sea is yours. You go with the current, traveling across the waves to faraway places. But the sea isn’t mine and never can be. My home on the beach is more precious to me than any of the treasures in the world.”

The sprite swam furiously away. He didn’t understand how, with all the magnificent treasures he’d offered her, with the life he could give her beneath the sea, Lucinda still preferred the company of a mere fisherman and their simple life on this simple shore. The song she sang from the shore, soaring on the wind, was one of yearning and loss.

Rejected, the sprite struck the surface of the water, causing a storm to rise up in his anger. Rain streamed down, hiding the shoreline behind a curtain of gray. Out at sea, a tiny fishing boat bobbed in the roiling water. As the water rose, a water horse—bare-chested, sharp-fanged, seaweed tangled in his mane—strode up the crest of a wave. White spray behind him, the water horse flew straight toward the boat.

The fisherman, pulled beneath the surface, could never come home. The sprite would never have to fight for Lucinda’s love again. But her song rose above the thunder and crashing waves, and the sprite knew what he had to do. He dove beneath the surface.

He made it to the side of the boat just as the water horse reared up with saltwater dripping from clawed hooves. The sprite kicked his legs and shot out of the water like a fish, between the water horse and the fisherman crouched on the bottom of the boat. The claws of the water horse sank into the sprite.

With all of his power, the sprite blew a wind that pushed the little fishing boat back toward shore. He knew that no gift could draw Lucinda away from her home. But, by sending the fisherman back to it, he’d found the only gift that mattered.